Entitlement Nation [Holiday Department]

To those of us who are old, today is really Columbus Day, the day when we celebrated or observed the “discovery” of America. But somehow it was decided almost forty years ago to move several holidays so that they would always come on Monday.

Somehow more three-day weekends seemed good for business. I will leave it to the economists to figure out if it helped business. I think it had a bad effect on general morale. It seems to have set up one more thing to which we feel entitled, rather than a treat when it happens.

Washington’s Birthday, Memorial Day, Columbus Day, and Veterans’ Day were all decided by the federal government to be observed on the third Monday of February, the fourth Monday of May, the second Monday of October and the fourth Monday of October, respectively. I am not sure of the reason that Independence Day was not moved, but they probably figured that having the “Fourth of July” on the sixth or the first would seem funny. Likewise, they somehow never got around to moving New Year’s Day. They left Labor Day fixed on a Monday since it was there already and did not touch Thanksgiving since it had set up a four-day weekend and the purpose of the Act was to lengthen weekends, not shorten them. And can you imagine the ruckus if they had touched Christmas. Merchants would want to make sure that they did not lose any selling time and some religious people would remind us that the December 25^th date is fixed in the Gospel according to St. Mark.

Since then, they moved Veterans’ Day back to November 11^th. Veterans groups and several states balked at the change. They pointed out that the old date was established because it was the date of the 1918 Armistice. [At the time many people still referred to the day as “Armistice Day” which was the holiday’s name until after the end of World War Two. Those people are mostly gone now.]

Also, since then Martin Luther King Day has been established and fixed on a Monday, the third one in January. And people seldom refer to “Washington’s Birthday” any more. “Presidents’ Day” seems to have replaced it. [Of course, George Washington’s actual birthday was February 11^th and was usually observed on February 22^nd. Neither date could ever come on the new date set for the holiday.]

One of the things that happens when we move these observances to Monday is that we pay less attention to why we are having the observance and more to the day off that it establishes. And if we don’t pay attention to the reason for an observance we never get to another question:

“Do we really still want this holiday?”